The course aims to transfer the fundamental knowledge and to form the basic competencies necessary for the development and the implementation of a business strategy in an emerging market.
The students are going to improve their analyzing, decision making, and planning skills as well as the ability to recognize strategic opportunities and threats.
The course requires the knowledge of basic economics concepts as the pre-requisite. It is preferable that the students have some practical entrepreneurial or marketing experience, but this is not obligatory.
The course has a distinct stress to the practice of strategic management. Although a few fundamental theories are mentioned, the bulk of the ideas are based on simple though efficient applied model that are easy to understand and convenient to use. The multitude of examples and stories from the personal consulting and managerial experience of the author are the hallmark of the course. The author’s original drawings make the key concepts well memorable ad cozy to deal with.

從本節課中

Managing sales in emerging markets

Dear student! In this module you will learn how to build and manage a strong sales system. You are going to study the sales system and its most important parts – the sales strategy, process, metrics, instruments and skills. On completing the module you will be able to analyze your current sales system, to design the necessary target sales system, to measure and to manage the sales process and the results. Do your best to apply all the ideas of the module to your business idea, discuss it with your friends and colleagues, do all the tasks, and you will have good progress in your learning. Good luck on this way!

與講師見面

Mikhail Plotnikov

Professor Department of General and Strategic Management

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One of the most important and controversial part of sales is planning. The exact evaluation of the market and the just estimation of the results, establishes the foundation for accurate performance.
In this part we will discuss the ways to develop a good sales plan.

We start with a question – when managing sales – what exactly is to manage?

The answers may be combined into two major groups – the results and the activities.

In other words we can plan specific achievements and rates that must be reached by the salesforce. Then we should encourage and motivate them for the achievement and punish them if the results are not sufficient.

The other way is to plan the set of specific activities that must be performed and thus should lead to the planned objectives. The sales managers this way are responsible primarily for the proper process implementation, while the process itself and the objectives are the prerogative of the top managers.

These two approaches are equally important. Choosing one and neglecting the other is a serious mistake.

Thus in planning sales we should plan the two things – the priority objectives and the necessary operations.

Although this may seem quite simple, a correct and balanced planning is not an easy matter.

Let us see this planning process in detail.

The most common approach to plan objectives is to have a look on to your personal ambitions and expectations, then correct it with your intuition and then formulate the desired level of target sales.

Some advanced planners also make corrections in accordance with the previous results or current sales level.

When asked about How they are going to reach those sales, the majority of those people answer that it is the task of the sales managers to meet the plans or that somehow the market should be more or less enough for this…

But this dim vision is just a fantasy and nothing more. This approach results in the incorrect plans and the multiple conflicts with the salesforce.

But there is another and much more professional approach.

The total sales are the number of clients multiplied by the size of an average deal then again multiplied by the frequency of the deal.

If you have different types of sales, different clients, and different sizes of deals – repeat this procedure as many times as it is necessary for each separate group

Try to make the calculations of this kind and you will see that you plans become more realistic and the degree of understanding and commitment among the salesforce is increased significantly.

Yet there is one more thing that is important to make the plans more precise. It is understanding the reliability of the figures. To do so, I prefer to use the instrument that is known as the Ansoff matrix.

The two dimensions of the matrix are the product and the market. Each dimension is divided into two areas – old and new. These categories are quite relative, they represent our experience and the ability to predict and control the processes and the activities related to each dimension. Thus all our sales, market activities and business units may be put into one of the four quadrants.

Selling old product within an old market is called shipping in this model. It has the highest level of reliability. I should say that the exact rates may differ. However the general proportion is almost all the same. So I usually give to shipping about 90% of reliability. That means – it is highly probable that 90% of the planned sales here will be performed, and 10% is the risk zone.

Offering a new product to an old market represent greater but still relatively moderate risk – I usually expect here about 60% of reliable sales.

Penetrating a new market with an old product represent even greater uncertainty, so that no more than 40% of the planned sales are truly reliable.

Finally entering a new market with a new product looks more like a suicide. The level of reliability here is about 10% only. But at the same time this means that 90% is the zone of uncertainty that may both present losses or extra profits.

Understanding this matrix provides you a more clear vision of the revenue streams ahead and the level of risk.

Thus, if I for example see a 10-million sales plan where they are going to reach 6 millions in shipping zone, 1 million in offering zone, 2 millions in penetrating zone and one more million in gambling zone, I understand that the revenues are not going to be 10 millions in total.

90% out of 6 millions + 60% out of 1+ 40% out of 2 + 10% out of 1 results in 5,4 + 0,6 + 0,8 + 0,1 that is 6,9 millions of reliable sales and 3,9 as the zone of risk.

With this knowledge I am able to manage the salesforce and to budget properly.

Although planning results is important, it is definitely not enough.

One should plan operations as well in order to reach higher reliability and manageability of the sales process. There are five main steps of such planning.

Start with planning the exact objectives – what ultimate results should be reached and what revenues or profits this should bring?

Then make a list of activities – what is necessary to do in order to reach the planned objectives.

Then proceed with a number of tools – how this should be performed and what tools may be of use?

After that put the exact figures for the number of activities implemented and tools used necessary to reach the objectives.

Finally, calculate the most probable result for each activity and put them altogether. Then as yourself whether this is enough to reach what you wanted or not. Correct the sequence if necessary.

As long as you do this, you have the detailed operations plan that makes it possible to control and correct the activities of the salesforce on time.

There are two major approaches what to plan – the objectives and the activities. Both are necessary and significant.

Planning the results of the sales must rely on the exact number of clients we are going to contact, the sizes of average deals, and the frequency of the deals.

These plans should be corrected in accordance with the probable level of reliability.